That's exactly why I personally find it so hard to understand; it is so lacking and yet, nobody has thought of improving it. What's up with that?

There have been plenty of topics about making improvements, they just rarely do anything about it. Almost everything you requested here has been requested and/or discussed before.

King Flapjack wrote:

I'm not sure what method you're referring to. Copying a number of frames from the end of the animation and pasting them at the beginning (or vice-versa) then reducing the frame count accordingly is a pretty barbaric way of accomplishing what we're talking about. Have you ever had to do this with 46 frames of animation? It's woefully inefficient and needlessly difficult. If frames were treated differently and could be moved/added/deleted then the 'method' you've described would be unnecessary.

It doesn't matter if there's 5 frames or 50. Aside from having to pinpoint the area you want, counting frames as someone said, it still only requires 1 copy/paste/frame limit change. If you're moving every frame 1 at a time to insert or remove one then that's because you're a noob, not because its some insanely difficult process.

That's exactly why I personally find it so hard to understand; it is so lacking and yet, nobody has thought of improving it. What's up with that?

There have been plenty of topics about making improvements, they just rarely do anything about it. Almost everything you requested here has been requested and/or discussed before.

King Flapjack wrote:

I'm not sure what method you're referring to. Copying a number of frames from the end of the animation and pasting them at the beginning (or vice-versa) then reducing the frame count accordingly is a pretty barbaric way of accomplishing what we're talking about. Have you ever had to do this with 46 frames of animation? It's woefully inefficient and needlessly difficult. If frames were treated differently and could be moved/added/deleted then the 'method' you've described would be unnecessary.

It doesn't matter if there's 5 frames or 50. Aside from having to pinpoint the area you want, counting frames as someone said, it still only requires 1 copy/paste/frame limit change. If you're moving every frame 1 at a time to insert or remove one then that's because you're a noob, not because its some insanely difficult process.

King Flapjack talking about the pain of being forced to overwrite other frames when moving frames. If one wants to insert or remove separate frames - that do not directly follow up each other - in the not-end or not-start of the movie, that is impossible to do with "just one copy/paste", and the counting gets very annoying in these cases.

King Flapjack talking about the pain of being forced to overwrite other frames when moving frames. If one wants to insert or remove separate frames - that do not directly follow up each other - in the not-end or not-start of the movie, that is impossible to do with "just one copy/paste", and the counting gets very annoying in these cases.

Look, either you guys are doing something horribly wrong, or you're horribly stupid and/or lazy.
If this was implemented, you'd still have to find the spot you want, then probably right click somewhere or select the frame, then select something else about insert frame before/after.
The way it is now you have to find the frame, select the following frames, copy/paste and then modify the frame count.
Whats is that? 2 more steps? And at most a few extra seconds of time? If even that long.

King Flapjack talking about the pain of being forced to overwrite other frames when moving frames. If one wants to insert or remove separate frames - that do not directly follow up each other - in the not-end or not-start of the movie, that is impossible to do with "just one copy/paste", and the counting gets very annoying in these cases.

Look, either you guys are doing something horribly wrong, or you're horribly stupid and/or lazy.
If this was implemented, you'd still have to find the spot you want, then probably right click somewhere or select the frame, then select something else about insert frame before/after.
The way it is now you have to find the frame, select the following frames, copy/paste and then modify the frame count.
Whats is that? 2 more steps? And at most a few extra seconds of time? If even that long.

Maybe two more steps yes, multiplied by a hundred icon states if you're dealing with very big animated icons. This is a pain because people who have icons made in the old Dream Maker (which did not support separate delays for each frame) may want to optimize their icons to have, for example, one frame with a delay of 10, in stead of 10 duplicated frames with a delay of 1.

And be careful when you're calling us lazy. The BYOND development team could very well also be called lazy for not willing to add a few simple, basic features to a graphic editing tool that is currently (and you said this yourself, too) horribly lacking in many aspects.

Maybe two more steps yes, multiplied by a hundred icon states if you're dealing with very big animated icons. This is a pain because people who have icons made in the old Dream Maker (which did not support separate delays for each frame) may want to optimize their icons to have, for example, one frame with a delay of 10, in stead of 10 duplicated frames with a delay of 1.

So you want a feature that inserts/removes frames from multiple icon states at once? Doesn't sound very useful. And frame delays are buggy anyway (especially with overlays), I'd recommend just using the old method.

And be careful when you're calling us lazy. The BYOND development team could very well also be called lazy for not willing to add a few simple, basic features to a graphic editing tool that is currently (and you said this yourself, too) horribly lacking in many aspects.

That's a very weird definition of 'lazy' you seem to have here, even going so far as to call the BYOND Staff, which keeps on updating BYOND and adding new features and fixes, lazy - but hey, it's Falacy. ;)
If someone doesn't want to go through redundant work, it doesn't necessarily mean he's lazy. Same for the BYOND Staff not implementing a certain feature - they can't go and implement every good feature that's requested, so they prioritize (you may want to look that word up as well).

King Flapjack talking about the pain of being forced to overwrite other frames when moving frames. If one wants to insert or remove separate frames - that do not directly follow up each other - in the not-end or not-start of the movie, that is impossible to do with "just one copy/paste", and the counting gets very annoying in these cases.

Look, either you guys are doing something horribly wrong, or you're horribly stupid and/or lazy.
If this was implemented, you'd still have to find the spot you want, then probably right click somewhere or select the frame, then select something else about insert frame before/after.
The way it is now you have to find the frame, select the following frames, copy/paste and then modify the frame count.
Whats is that? 2 more steps? And at most a few extra seconds of time? If even that long.

I certainly don't appreciate being called stupid and/or lazy. Imagine for a moment that you're dealing with a single tile of an animation that takes up 105 tiles. The animation is 46 frames long. You have to optimize every tile in this animation.

Your process: Start at the beginning. Count all consecutive frames that contain the same contents. Select the range of frames from the next non-similar frame to the end of the animation. Remember the number of frames you currently have selected. Cut those frames, count out the number of frames, paste them at the intended destination. Increment the delay for the frames being eliminated. Reduce the frame count. Repeat this process over and over again until the tile is fully optimized.

Our suggested process: Select the frames you want deleted. Delete them. Let DreamMaker change the frame count automatically. Increment the delay of the frame into which the deleted frames are being condensed. Repeat this process until the tile is fully optimized.

What about this suggestion is it exactly that you take issue with? I honestly don't see any reason why this change would not be a massive improvement.

King Flapjack talking about the pain of being forced to overwrite other frames when moving frames. If one wants to insert or remove separate frames - that do not directly follow up each other - in the not-end or not-start of the movie, that is impossible to do with "just one copy/paste", and the counting gets very annoying in these cases.

Look, either you guys are doing something horribly wrong, or you're horribly stupid and/or lazy.
If this was implemented, you'd still have to find the spot you want, then probably right click somewhere or select the frame, then select something else about insert frame before/after.
The way it is now you have to find the frame, select the following frames, copy/paste and then modify the frame count.
Whats is that? 2 more steps? And at most a few extra seconds of time? If even that long.

I certainly don't appreciate being called stupid and/or lazy. Imagine for a moment that you're dealing with a single tile of an animation that takes up 105 tiles. The animation is 46 frames long. You have to optimize every tile in this animation.

Your process: Start at the beginning. Count all consecutive frames that contain the same contents. Select the range of frames from the next non-similar frame to the end of the animation. Remember the number of frames you currently have selected. Cut those frames, count out the number of frames, paste them at the intended destination. Increment the delay for the frames being eliminated. Reduce the frame count. Repeat this process over and over again until the tile is fully optimized.

Our suggested process: Select the frames you want deleted. Delete them. Let DreamMaker change the frame count automatically. Increment the delay of the frame into which the deleted frames are being condensed. Repeat this process until the tile is fully optimized.

What about this suggestion is it exactly that you take issue with? I honestly don't see any reason why this change would not be a massive improvement.

Falacy is like the church; he likes to preserve pointless, old and conservative ways that nobody is helped with. :P

And, hell, they could even make a fully automated icon-optimizing feature for Dream Maker to get this process done in one click.
The world of BYOND games swarms with un-optimized animated icons that are made in older versions of Dream Maker.

Falacy is like the church; he likes to preserve pointless, old and conservative ways that nobody is helped with. :P

Considering they usually break and/or screw things up in the process of changing them, I can't say that's entirely untrue about me.

And, hell, they could even make a fully automated icon-optimizing feature for Dream Maker to get this process done in one click.
The world of BYOND games swarms with un-optimized animated icons that are made in older versions of Dream Maker.

Now THAT is actually a good idea. Though a method for directly inserting/removing frames wouldn't hurt, for the most part it would be pointless, especially when there are countless far more important things they could be adding/fixing.
EDIT: Though you still have to take into account that frame delays are functionally inadequate.
EDIT 2: They could also add a method of expanding frame counts, so duplicate frames are automatically inserted, possibly even with a delay modifier of some sort, so you can expand a 10 delayed frame to 5 frames with a 2 delay each.

EDIT 2: They could also add a method of expanding frame counts, so duplicate frames are automatically inserted, possibly even with a delay modifier of some sort, so you can expand a 10 delayed frame to 5 frames with a 2 delay each.

That's pretty much exactly the opposite of what we were going for with this suggested change, but I suppose in some cases it would have some utility.

I filed one. Its "Deferred". You know what "Deferred" means in most cases? "We're too stupid and/or lazy to fix that".

That report is a specific case regarding overlays and hardly a blanket "frame delays aren't working". Good report & demo though and we'll eventually fix it. "Deferred" almost always means that the bug is low-priority given that we always have a backlog of things to fix. If frame delays weren't working in general, that would be a high priority.

Your guys' posts are fine, although you have been baited by Falacy's usual thread-hijacking nonsense. The features you suggest are mostly do-able and have been noted. I'm not sure you are aware of it, but as of 443 it is easier to mass-edit the delays of all of the frames in a movie (just double-click on one delay and you can change them all to the same value)-- applying this to groups shouldn't be too hard.

Your guys' posts are fine, although you have been baited by Falacy's usual thread-hijacking nonsense. The features you suggest are mostly do-able and have been noted. I'm not sure you are aware of it, but as of 443 it is easier to mass-edit the delays of all of the frames in a movie (just double-click on one delay and you can change them all to the same value)-- applying this to groups shouldn't be too hard.

I have noticed, and I thank you. It's made part of my job much easier.

That report is a specific case regarding overlays and hardly a blanket "frame delays aren't working". Good report & demo though and we'll eventually fix it. "Deferred" almost always means that the bug is low-priority given that we always have a backlog of things to fix. If frame delays weren't working in general, that would be a high priority.

Specific case? It effects overlays when flicked. Things like hair, clothing, weapons, etc all have to be spammishly setup to get them to work properly, and I can definitely see it causing problems in legacy games, though maybe it doesn't effect 3.5 icons since I can't remember ever noticing it.

EDIT:

Your guys' posts are fine, although you have been baited by Falacy's usual thread-hijacking nonsense.

Thread jacking nonsense? Not only are we still entirely on topic, but since I brought up an actual discussion; they came up with a far more sensible way to accomplish what they wanted... well, for you to implement for them =P

Your guys' posts are fine, although you have been baited by Falacy's usual thread-hijacking nonsense. The features you suggest are mostly do-able and have been noted. I'm not sure you are aware of it, but as of 443 it is easier to mass-edit the delays of all of the frames in a movie (just double-click on one delay and you can change them all to the same value)-- applying this to groups shouldn't be too hard.

Yep, I noticed that new check box to change all delays very recently. Ironically, the update which added that feature seemed to have come out the day after I posted this thread. :)